


Frame (Dal Segno al Fine)

by jazzjo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-05 23:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4198455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin can be found four times a week between the hours of eight and five in the window seat of Ark Café, with more charcoal on her hands than probably is hygienic in an establishment that sells food and drink. If anything, it provides the perfect muse for her to work, because the window seat directly faces that of Grounders Coffee Beans and Brewery right across the thin street, framing this tall, dark girl with eyes a mystery between green and grey, fingers slender and long curved around pencils worn down to stubs as she clutches manuscript paper and writes page after page of what must be a symphony or something. </p><p>Or — the artist and composer AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first sketches (prelude)

Clarke brought her knees up to her chest as she hugged her mug of hot chocolate in one hand, the other listlessly sketching as she stared out the window across the street for the fourth time in the past hour. She had been in this very seat that long, and would be here for the next eight hours unless someone told her otherwise — and it wouldn’t be the staff. 

 

After all, the baristas at Ark Café had seen her between the hours of eight and five far too many times to even bat an eyelash at the sight of her curled up in their window seat with a sketchbook and the first — or second, or third, or fifth — of many drinks in her hand. 

 

Usually she people watched, her attention never held for all that long. Her eye would wander from subject to subject as she sought inspiration, the charcoal pencil in her hand only ever sketching out fractions of the whole picture. 

 

It was a sort of thrill, Clarke supposed, to draw her own impression of something she knew so little about. That was enough for her, at least, to create and fill in the blanks when she had no idea. 

 

For someone’s whose primary joy in life involved keen observation, Clarke had a astonishingly short attention span. 

 

But this view, Clarke could — and would, if she kept up what she was currently occupied with — stare at it all day, content to just watch and let her hand wander over curves and sharp angles, over darkness and barely drawn light. 

 

She could hold Clarke’s attention for as long as Clarke never thought she would be able to give it. 

 

On her page now, Clarke took in as she finally pulled her eyes away from the window across the thin street, were outlines already filled in for the most part. A tall girl — Clarke could apparently tell that much, even though the lithe figure was curled up in a chair much like she was, a thick stack of paper in hand while she had her long, slender fingers curved around a stub of a pencil. 

 

Her face, though, that was still a blank. 

 

Clarke could see the shape of her face, tilted down and angled ever so slightly towards the window as she furrowed her brow. Clarke could see the dark hair pulled back from her face, evidently tied back in some complicated braid or hairdo that Clarke could never even imagine her hands deft enough to pull off. 

 

Clarke could see cheekbones high enough to make the girl look as if she had been carved of marble. If she had been a sculptor, the girl across the street in Grounders Coffee Beans and Brewery would have been a subject she would die to work with.

 

What Clarke could not see, not for the life of her — for the past few days, week even, she had tried — were her eyes. 

 

Taking a sip from the swiftly cooling mug in her hand, Clarke’s own blue eyes flickered back up off her page, and refocused on the sight just beyond her window. 

 

There was something about the windows, perfectly aligned but clearly of different sizes, framing the girl and creating a sole focal point that Clarke could hardly pull her attention away from. 

 

Sure, she heard the shuffling and clanking and all that white noise that made the Ark such a comforting but distracting place to work in, and gave the passers-by the periphery of her vision to wander about it but there was nothing ever significant enough to pull her attention away from the girl across the street. 

 

Or perhaps, the girl was significant enough that Clarke did not feel the need, even subconsciously, to allow her attention to wander. 

 

The thought of moving on to another subject had never even crossed her mind since she started to sketch the girl. 

 

Though, she did find herself wondering what it was in her hands that had her so utterly focused and lost in her own world, despite the voice in the back of her mind that told Clarke that the same could easily be said about herself. 

 

Occasionally Clarke’s eyes would wander down to the page she was working on, her pencil stilling as she took in her impression of the girl who had evidently left such a deep impression on her. 

 

Her hand would itch to fill in the blanks upon the figure’s face. Her mind would protest that there was probably too much in those eyes she had never seen for her to do them justice. 

 

Reason told her that no one would see this sketch anyway — she did guard all her unfinished works, or those she held too close to her heart to bear sharing, with her life. 

 

Within the time that she had spent mulling over the incomplete state of her newest sketch, three drinks had come and gone, the charcoal pencil she had in hand being the second she had worn down to a blunt point. 

 

Switching her pencil out for a fresh, sharpened one from her tin, she glanced up only to find herself looking straight into the eyes of the girl who had held her attention the entirety of the morning. 

 

Inadvertently a gasp forced its way out between Clarke’s parted lips, her hand immediately moving in a flurry across the page to catch the steely gaze that she had finally gotten the chance to see. 

 

Shame, though, that she couldn’t see the colour of her eyes all that well across the distance. But that was beside the point — at least that was what Clarke had to tell herself — since Clarke sketched in shades of grey, black and white. Colour mattered in this sketch just about as much as it mattered in Picasso’s Guernica. 

 

Clarke pulled her hand away from the surface of the paper the moment she finished the stroke that filled in all the shading, afraid that her usual nitpicking would mar the sketch before she could properly look at it. 

 

Allowing herself the a brief celebration of victory, Clarke made to smile at the girl across the street — after all, Clarke had never had such a perfect muse, not even with still life or with people she knew. 

 

Before they caught each other’s eye, however, the girl had calmly turned back towards the interior of Grounders as someone sat down heavily in the seat opposite her. 

 

Snapping her gaze back to her lap, Clarke cursed under her breath and made to fling her pencil at the bunch that lay on the table. 

 

The shift of the door at the corner of her eye — Grounders’ door, that is — caught her attention, prompting Clarke to keep her hold on the pencil, scrawling a signature in the bottom left corner of the paper as she would   a painting, and leaping out of her seat, leaving absolutely everything behind as she sprinted out the door hastily. 

 

The girl from the window seat across the street was striding towards her, caught up in half-silent conversation with the blondish girl matching her stride for stride. 

 

Before she could take another step closer Clarke realised how hard her knees were shaking, and how strange she must look, standing flustered on the sidewalk outside a café, paper in hands covered in black. 

 

Turning tail, she ducked back into Ark and settled herself sullenly back into her seat. Refocusing her attention back on the passing foot traffic, Clarke couldn’t help but notice the drifting piece of thick paper that was meandering the narrow street between Ark and Grounders, one that looked all too familiar and had all too strong a pull for her to ignore. 

 

Rising from her seat once more, Clarke moved to pick it up. 

 

The paper was heavy in her hand, thick and soft with five-lined staves inked on, and pencil markings of notes and rests that Clarke could barely find in her memory to comprehend. 

 

This must have been what she was working on. 

 

But it was a page, one with no beginning and no end, no context with which to comprehend it. It must have been a part of something bigger, and whatever that was, it was now missing an entire part of itself. 

 

She’d have to abandon her seat once more, Clarke supposed, the next time she saw the girl, she would hand her the paper — just that. After all, if she ever lost any of her sketches, she would most definitely want them back. 

 

It was just a courtesy, artist to artist. Well, artist to composer, anyway. 

 

Maybe she’d finally find out what colour the composer’s eyes were. Lined with thick kohl or something resembling it, Clarke yearned to satisfy the deep need to know what her eyes really looked like beyond the glance she had been granted, one she had never quite felt before. 

 

* * *

 

 

It had grown into a habit Lexa found she didn’t mind — settling into the window of Anya’s coffee shop, weaving music out of white noise and the movement around her. 

 

Of the people she saw, the snippets of life she heard, all that seeped into her work and made her wonder why she had always worked in the silence of her own room in the past. 

 

The music of the people, she decided, gripping her pencil more firmly — it was too short at this point, but she felt compelled to stick to her habit of a pencil per piece, even if it didn’t seem wise for an entire symphony — was to be written among them, integrating them into its every beat and every rest. 

 

How else would she know what life felt like?

 

Her sister had dragged her out of her room one morning, insisting that Lexa finally get out of her room for once in her life. She could write music anywhere, Anya had insisted. 

 

And she could. 

 

Especially in Anya’s café, the scent of freshly ground coffee beans permeating her senses and the foot traffic just outside giving her more than enough to draw inspiration from. 

 

Even if it didn’t, the opposite café did, every day from eight to five. 

 

Where Lexa had eyeliner, the fair-skinned blonde across the ribbon of a street had what seemed like charcoal smudges. Where her pencil grew stubby and too short for her long fingers, the girl had an endless supply of sharpened pencils at the ready. 

 

An artist, Lexa supposed. 

 

Anya stopped by from time to time, her warm hand finding Lexa’s shoulder and clipped words Lexa knew were spoken out of concern finding her ears. 

 

Somehow the music just flowed, just as smoothly as the coffee and tea did, in this seat. 

 

Just a week in this café and she had written far more of this symphony that she had of any other work in the past year and a half. 

 

Lexa had never had bursts of creativity before. It had always been a steady stream, ever since she had picked up mallets for the first time. Music came naturally to her, be it in the form of new melodies and harmonies intertwined or in the form of new instruments to learn. 

 

And then there had been the dry spell.

 

She had only ever had one, and it had come with a vengeance. Costia left a void that could hardly be filled, and Lexa surmised that the music must have realised that. 

 

Not that she would not have appreciated the comfort of her oldest companion, or at least the distraction. 

 

Anya had assured her that it would come back. After all, Lexa had hardly gone three years in her life without music, back when she had been too small to even clamber up on the seat of the rickety upright piano as Anya’s fingers danced across the keys. 

 

The moment she was tall enough and strong enough, she would wrestle herself up onto the bench and sit by her sister, head leaning on Anya’s lap as the then-eight year old played her Schubert and Bach. 

 

Now as she allowed herself to soak up the atmosphere of the place — Anya swore it was the lack of sun that caused the drought — her pencil flew across the page with the dexterity she was so used to once more. 

 

Of all the pieces she had written, Lexa had a feeling this one would be the one she would be most proud of. 

 

Even more so than the one piece she could no longer bring herself to play, or listen to. She had half a mind to contact the publishers, to rescind all copies of the score still left on the shelves and to put an end to it altogether. 

 

When Anya had felt reassured enough that whoever was closing up — probably Indra, if she was leaving early — Lexa gathered up the thick bundle of manuscript paper and tied it together with its ribbon, setting it in her messenger bag. 

 

She left two loose pieces, though, the two that she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what was not quite right. There was a note, somewhere in the bars that connected those two pages, that didn’t quite sit right with what she was going for. 

 

It didn’t help, of course, that while Lexa abided by every other rule she had ever come across in her life, music was the one domain in which she couldn’t give two hoots about rules or their implications. 

 

Granting herself one proper glance out of the window, Lexa found herself staring into bright blue before the jolt of Anya setting herself into the chair opposite her pulled her back to Grounders’ interior. 

 

“Ready to go, sis?” Anya slurred, half exhausted from a day on her feet. 

 

Lexa nudged her sister in the ribs, causing Anya to squirm and then glare daggers at her, before rising to her feet and offering Anya and hand up. They walked side by side out of the cafe, headed towards their shared apartment in tandem. 

 

Lexa still missed the times she would lag behind her sister, the one who had always seemed to tower over her. It had been that way until one day when Lexa was sixteen or so when she realised she no longer had to look up to talk to Anya. 

 

Most of their communication could be accomplished without words, more so before Lexa had shut herself away, but they were getting back to where they were. 

 

Anya broke her reverie by hip checking her, attempting to steal the sheets out of her hands just as they passed through the doors. Hurriedly Lexa slipped them as best she could into her bag while holding Anya off with the other. 

 

No one would see that symphony until it was done. It had to be perfect if she was to continue to write music even after she had stopped for the better part of a year. Not if she could help it, in any case. 


	2. still life (da capo)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Anya, properly this time; the sisters' pasts aren't as simple as one might think. That doesn't stop Anya from teasing Lexa till she blushes, though, and Clarke is just as far gone.

 

Anya pressed the tips of her fingers firmly into her sister’s shoulders, trying every method she had developed over the years of calming Lexa down. Both the younger girl’s hands were quivering as they sorted through her messenger bag. Over and over she had done so, to no avail. 

 

“‘Lex,” Anya began, stopping just short of finishing her sentence as she felt her sister’s shoulders tense and drop resignedly, “Lek-sa, we’ll find it. Sooner or later it’ll turn up, alright. Tearing your bag apart now isn’t helping anything.”

 

Scrubbing a hand over her face, Lexa allowed a murmur of a sigh to pass her lips before she rasped breathlessly, “It’s like a piece of me is missing, Anya.”

 

“We’ll search in the morning, Little Leks, we’ll find it.” 

 

Anya bent to look her sister in those kohl-rimmed eyes the colour of moss — just as wet now, too — and squeezed her shoulders in comfort. 

 

“Thank you, Anya.”

 

Lowering herself onto the piano bench next to Lexa, Anya grasped the first page of her sister’s symphony in hand, running her finger over the notes as they were written on the page. 

 

“Play with me,” Lexa spoke under her breath, “Could you play it with me, please?”

 

“Alexandria, you do realise a symphony is meant for more than two people, right?” Anya jibed, raising her eyebrows while setting the page back onto the baby grand.  

 

It wasn’t the same one they had grown up with, of course. That one had burned in the fire that took their parents. 

 

Even in spite of her words, Anya placed her fingers on the keys, searching out parts she could incorporate into a makeshift piano part. 

 

“Antalya, just play.”

 

Anya rolled her eyes at the use of her proper first name, smirking as she heard her sister tuning up her cello next to her. 

 

“Three, four,” Lexa counted them in, allowing Anya to take the first few bars of a flute solo before joining her with a fourth horn countermelody.

 

The music between them ebbed and flowed as it always had, a couple of misplaced notes or misread rhythms scattered about as they both sight-read Lexa’s latest efforts. 

 

As they meandered their way through the piece, skipping over the page that they had lost, Anya astoundingly remained silent, choosing instead to focus on the movement in her hands, and the movement of the music. 

 

The first movement ended with more a whimper than a bang, left only partially resolved as the bow left the strings of Lexa’s cello and Anya’s fingers left the ivory keys. 

 

Ducking her head, Lexa haltingly ventured, “Anya, how was it?”

 

Glancing down at her hands, Lexa hardly waiting for her older sister’s response before she fumbled and scrambled into her next words, “I have not written in such a long time, and I do know that it is no excuse, but at the same time the notes have just flowed out so fluidly that I never quite know what is or is not right anymore. If it sounds horrendous I would completely understand. After all, I have been writing more with my eyes and a preoccupied mind than with my ears—”

 

“Lek-sa,” Anya placed a warm hand on Lexa’s flailing left hand, weighing it down steadily as she drew out the syllables in her sister’s diminutive name, “It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard you write. Different that what you’ve written in the past, but that is understandable. You have changed more in personality these past months than I have in appearance since I was twelve.”

 

Lexa bit her lip. Focusing her eyes on the hand holding the bow, she made to smile, before she remembered that the first movement, the one they had just played; it sounded like heartbreak. 

 

Well, the part that came after heartbreak, at the very least. 

 

It was healing in process, in motion, with tritones and diminished sevenths that perturbed them both, and yet there was a certain calmness to it that she could not deny. 

 

Her sister rose from her perch on the piano bench, long fluid strides carrying her over to Lexa in a sliver of an instant. Enveloping Lexa in a soft hug — one that was all angles and elbows all the same, though — Anya ruffled her sister’s hair before returning to the piano. 

 

The familiar opening arpeggiated chords of _Carrying You_ from Castle in the Sky began to ring out tentatively from the strings of the piano. Lexa’s hands inadvertently shook as she recalled the very first time they had properly played this piece together. 

 

_ The day Anya had left. _

 

Lexa shook her head firmly, tightening her grip around the bow just enough for her to raise it to the strings of her cello.

 

_ Anya had come back for her. She always did. _

 

Pulling the bow across the strings steadily, Lexa began to weave a counter melody she was innately familiar with by now through the notes of Anya’s piano. 

 

_ Goodness knows how many times she had played this line alone. _

 

Anya’s hands stilled as they moved to the quicker portion of the theme, allowing Lexa to reacquaint herself with the more adventurous parts of her playing. 

 

Between the both of them, they traded off the lead a few more times before Anya guided them towards the ending cadences of the piece. 

 

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Anya murmured when the lingering music had faded at last. 

 

Lexa chuckled, a throaty sound she didn’t often make anymore, “Not since Cos—. It matters not, we should do this more often, Anya, I have missed playing with you.”

 

Gingerly Anya lay the dust cover over the keys of her piano, shutting its lid and leaving it be as she swivelled around where she sat to face Lexa. 

 

As her sister cleaned her bow and loosened it, Anya finally dared to probe, “So, Little Leks, who’s been holding your attention so well that you spend the better part of each day writing music without looking at you paper? All I’ve seen these past weeks is you gazing dreamily out the window. Hot chick?”

 

In tandem with her last quip, Anya raised her eyebrows and grinned at Lexa, watching her sister pointedly rolling her eyes. 

 

“Shof op, Anya,” Lexa intoned, her eyes trained on the cello she was placing back into its case. 

 

Anya allowed a loose laugh to escape her lips, tilting her head as she eyed her younger sister, “Reverting back to childhood secret languages now, are we? Come on, goufa, no need to hide crushes from your big sister.”

 

“S’not a crush,” Lexa ground out, doing out the clasps of her cello case with as much aggression as she could without damaging anything. 

 

A sharp laugh emanated from Anya’s lips as she fired back immediately, “If it’s got you, Alexandria, of all people, speaking in incomplete sentences, it’s a crush.”

 

Lexa pressed her lips together, busying herself with shifting her cello case to its place in the corner of the room. 

 

To give it to her, though, Anya was anything if not relentless. 

 

“Lek-sa, so long as it isn’t someone from _the competition_ , it’s perfectly fine,” Anya ventured, “I’d go so far as to say I was happy for you.”

 

Letting her voice trail off, Anya took in the way her sister flinched ever so slightly.

 

“Little Leks, come on,” Anya spoke, her words coming off a little softer this time, “I just want to know so I can see if I can help you.”

 

“It’s nothing, Antalya, and that’s the end of it.” Lexa uttered those words with such an air of finality that Anya was taken aback, resolving to pursue this topic further another time, when Lexa wasn’t quite so wound up. 

 

_ God, that girl needed to get laid. _

 

Getting to her feet and scampering after the retreating back of her younger sister, Anya wrapped her arm around Lexa’s shoulder once she caught up with her. 

 

“I’ll stop pushing, okay,” Anya relented, leaning her head on her sister’s, “I was just curious, is all.”

 

After a pause, she began again, “Y’know, Little Leks, I miss when you were actually _little_ , when I could put my elbow on your head instead of you being just my height.”

 

That did the trick. 

 

Lexa’s shoulders shook loosely as she choked out a laugh, “I did grow an awful lot in the couple years you were gone, after all.”

 

“Mother must have had a fit,” Anya snarked, ruffling her sister’s hair before pulling her down to sit on the floor in front of the couch that they had reached. 

 

As Anya threaded her fingers through Lexa’s hair, braiding it slowly and intricately the way she had when Lexa was a child, Lexa allowed herself one line, “You should have heard the way she went on about how neither of us would ever get boyfriends for being this tall, let alone husbands.”

 

They sat in relative silence as Anya continued to braid downwards, until she saw fit to break it. 

 

“They knew about me before you told them about Costia, you k-know that, r-right?” Anya stammered, “That’s why I left.”

 

“I always thought you left because you could not deal with how they ran the household,” Lexa murmured, pausing before she dared continue, “Did they throw you out? Or did you leave of your own accord.”  


 

Anya grimaced, her words hesitant but bitter, “Twenty minutes, they gave me. To pack and to get my ass out of that prison they called a home. The day you called me that you were going to tell them about Costia, that was the first day I had even gone close to the house since I left.”

 

“You could not leave me behind,” Lexa surmised. 

 

Sighing, Anya finished off the main braid in Lexa’s hair, “But I couldn’t take you with me right away either. I had to get myself into a good place, then go back for you.”

 

“You did, Anya, thank you.”

 

Anya smiled, a sincere one, one that few people but Lexa ever got to see. 

“Of course, Little Leks. You’re my baby sister.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had started pouring on Clarke’s way home. Large, flattening droplets that thrummed into her shoulders and soaked through the thick softness of her flannel shirt. 

 

Bending half over, Clarke attempted to shelter her backpack slung in front of her. 

 

It anything, she had to keep her drawing — _that drawing_  — and the piece of music she had picked up dry. 

 

By the time Clarke had managed to stumble to her front door, soaked to the bone, she fumbled in her pocket for her keys and burst through the door less than gracefully. 

 

The papers though, those were blessedly dry.

 

Even after having lived in this house for her whole life, it still seemed imposing. More so now that the warmest presence — her father, may he rest in peace — was gone. 

 

Clarke stepped into the foyer, all too aware of the rainwater she was dripping on the marble floors. Every step she took echoed in that hollow way that she had always feared as a child. 

 

Needless to say Clarke didn’t do much sneaking out as a teenager. 

 

She rifled through the pile of fresh laundry next to the ironing room, seeking out her fluffy warm robe, slipping herself into it with a sigh. 

 

“Clarke Emery Griffin,” At the sound of that all too familiar voice and its note of warning, Clarke’s footsteps halted and her shoulders squared, “Where have you been all day?”

 

Running a hand through her sopping hair to pry it away from her face, Clarke turned on the balls of her feet as she spoke as steadily as she could manage, “At Raven’s, Mom.”

 

Abby sighed as she took a few steps closer to her daughter, stopping short when she realised how wet the girl was, “Yesterday you were at Octavia’s, and today at Raven’s. I thought since you had taken a break from school, you would be spending more time at home.”

 

“I dropped ou—”, Clarke’s correction was silenced by her mother’s interjection.

 

“Get washed up and dry, and go to bed, Clarke,” Abby stated, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Lowering her head and grasping the backpack in her hand all the more tightly, Clarke nodded as she spoke, “Yes mom. Goodnight.” 

 

~~ Goodnight dad. ~~

 

“Goodnight, Clarke.”

 

~~ Goodnight, princess. ~~

 

Once she was less soaked in rainwater and more so in that of her shower, Clarke turned her attention to the cargo she carried. Kicking stray shirts and discarded sketches out of her way, Clarke threw herself on the bed as she pulled both sheets of previous paper out of her damp backpack. 

 

She carefully lay the sketch under her pillow, knowing that she would want to work on it sooner or later, and that it would get lost anywhere else in her room. 

 

Laying on her back, Clarke flicked the switch for the nightlight she had had since she was a child. 

 

Her father had put it in, rigging it to project an illuminated outline of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Clarke could hardly sleep a night without it, to be honest. 

 

Raising the sheet music to her eyes, Clarke followed the music with a finger as she tried to decipher it. 

 

~~ As she tried to decipher her. ~~

 

Clarke played trumpet perfectly well, really, but only ever by ear. Her band director had always been so frustrated, even when she could read musical notation albeit a little more slowly than he expected. 

 

Now, her abilities were stilted at best. 

 

She recognised a few things, to her merit. 

 

Running through all the musical notation she had retained in her mind, Clarke could make out intertwining lines (at least she could figure out that the whole page only contained about eight bars, no more, and that every line was a separate part), marvelling at the aesthetic intrigue she found as she mapped out the music spatially. 

 

At the beginning of the page she found a symbol she new she had seen before. Like a letter ’S’, but struck through and embellished with dots. Simply in the way the tip of the pen created the angled swerves in the 'S', Clarke's attention was rapt withal. 

 

What entranced Clarke the most was the handwriting. 

 

Every _forte_ and _pianissimo_  was written with such exactitude that everything looked the same. Each flourish attached to certain notes was measured but with a degree of carelessness that lent itself to being carefree. 

 

The writing itself was a work of art that Clarke (as an artist, she swore) could spend hours upon hours appreciating. 

 

Now Clarke really did wish that she had taken reading music more seriously. If anything, she would be able to decipher something about that composer in the window. 

 

On the other hand, perhaps it was for the best that she could not read any of it. She was never meant to see this, she knew. It was personal to the girl in the same way — or similar, at least — that Clarke’s sketches were to her, especially given how she had held those papers so dearly. 

 

Glancing at the clock pressuring her on the wall of her room, Clarke gasped as she saw the hands creep closer to two than one. 

 

Clarke fumbled around the mess on her floor until she had scrounged up a folder, slipping the sheet into one of its slots and her drawing — the one from under her pillow — into another, and sliding the entire thing into her backpack. 

 

Hopefully, Clarke thought as she settled into the welcome warmth of her duvet, she would be able to return it in the morning. 

 

Seeing the composer again, well, that was just a bonus. What was an artist without her muse, after all?

 


	3. impression, sunrise (custos)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a coincidence occurs, the two meet, and very little music making or drawing gets done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if anyone is curious, since custos is a little hard to define offhand by googling, here's the definition I used
> 
> Custos: Symbol at the very end of a staff of music which indicates the pitch for the first note of the next line as a warning of what is to come. The custos was commonly used in handwritten Renaissance and typeset Baroque music.
> 
> Impression, Sunrise is a Monet painting that is representative of the Impressionist movement.
> 
> Also I may or may not be disappearing for a couple days because of examinations (ew) but if I can find time I will post (since writing helps me destress anyway and my sister keeps mocking me for the 'cactus up my ass').

Dragging herself out of bed that morning hadn’t been particularly pleasant. Needless to say, Abby’s 7 am wake-up calls were even less welcome now than they were when Clarke had been in school. 

 

Thankfully, her mother had been called in for an emergency surgery, allowing Clarke to pick up her backpack and head out of the house without coming up with a new excuse. 

 

Clarke scuffed her toes on cobblestones and concrete as she walked towards Ark Café, stopping only when the too-dark interior of the establishment greeted her with an unwelcome shock. 

 

Seriously?

 

She felt the itch of a lopsided grin blossoming on her face, taming it as she cross the path between the two cafés, finding herself inside Grounders in but a few steps. 

 

Earliness had always been something that Clarke distinctly lacked, but reckless courage ( read: stupidity ), Clarke had in spades. 

 

That was the only way to explain it. How else would she reason out the way her feet carried her directly to the as yet occupied window seat in Grounders?

 

Setting her belongings down, Clarke worried her bottom lip with her canines. 

 

Drawing the folder out of her backpack, Clarke slid the single piece of sheet music out before returning the drawing to her bag. Just as she lay the manuscript paper face-down on the table between both plush chairs, a throat cleared crisply behind her. 

 

“You sure you want to sit here, Griffin?”

 

Clarke whirled around on the toes of her right foot, half stumbling into the table before she caught herself. 

 

Eyes widening, her voice rang brightly as she exclaimed, “The hell are you doing here, Reyes?”

 

“Some people actually have to work jobs that don’t let them sit on their fucking ass all day, Princess,” Raven drawled, “‘Sides, the job comes with a fucking phenomenal package deal.”

 

Rolling her eyes at one of her oldest friends, Clarke stepped away from the table and into Raven’s open arms, hugging the friend she had seen so little of since she had first entered medical school. 

 

She would never admit it (least of all to Raven), but Raven definitely gave some of the best hugs in the world. 

 

Clarke had missed the times they had in high school. Even now, they were close enough that Raven was a plausible excuse for Clarke to raise to her mother.

 

“I’m late on one bloody day—” A surly voice snarked behind Raven, emanating from a dangerously thin grimace. 

 

Raven chuckled, deep within her chest enough that Clarke could feel the vibrations of her laughter. Releasing one of her arms from around Clarke’s neck, and pivoted and landed her other foot such that she faced the tall blonde directly. 

 

“Come on, Anya,” Raven coaxed, “You know I only have eyes for you.”

 

Clarke witnessed the hard exterior visibly soften, as the woman in question — Anya, was it — regarded Raven. 

 

“And I actually have eyes that I would like to keep,” Another interjection came from behind Anya, “So would the two of you kindly not confess your undying love for each other right in front of me. It is honestly quite perturbing.”  


Raven grinned widely, releasing her hold on Clarke completely to flounce over to Anya, “Ah, Lexa, ever the charmer.”

 

The other three bantered back and forth for a few fleeting moments, Anya still blocking the third speaker from Clarke’s line of sight. Clarke feared the risk of whiplash as she followed the conversation as it volleyed around. 

 

Before Clarke truly did a number on her neck, however, Raven turned her attention — and consequentially the attention of the other three people present — back on Clarke. 

 

“Speaking of charming, Griffin,” Raven piped up, “You really do need to work some of that blonde haired, blue eyed, bushy tailed charm on our dear Lexa over here to make her give up that seat.”

 

Said girl — Lexa, apparently — huffed from her place behind Anya, or at least Clarke was under the impression that she did so. 

 

“Eh, Little Leks, you can’t really deny that. You’ve been sitting there and pining for the past who knows how long.”

 

Clarke raised her eyebrows, questioning the possibility of this Lexa being the girl she had drawn. The girl in the window. 

 

An equally tall — by Anya’s standards, not Raven’s — figure pushed past both of the girls between them, eyes trained on the ground as she made to pass Clarke as well. 

 

“It’s no matter—” Lexa began, before Clarke hastily cut her off. 

 

Gathering up her things, Clarke forced herself to avert her eyes before she stuttered, “I’m never usually here, anyway. It’s just that Ark was closed today and I figured why not, y’know? I shouldn’t have imposed; I did know someone usually sat here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

Before she could move two inches from where she stood, flustered, Raven closed the gap between them momentarily and thwacked her soundly upside the head, forcing a pencil in Clarke’s hand to fall to the ground and smash its tip. 

 

“All this time you could have been here you were at  Ark of all fucking places? What the hell? Where is your loyalty, Griffin?” Raven scoffed. 

 

Clarke whipped around to face her friend, offended, “Like I knew you were working here, Reyes. What does it matter to you anyway?”

 

Clarke paused, and Raven snickered just under her breath, “Penny in the air—”

 

Stepping back — as much as her proximity to the table would allow, anyway — Clarke blinked her eyes a few times before the pieces of what Raven had told her over the past few years, lost in the haze of cramming and anatomy and too many cups of shitty coffee, finally put themselves together. 

 

“— and the penny drops.”

 

“Holy flaming shit,” Clarke sputtered, “This is that girl? The one you told me about when I was in my first freaking year of med school? That “hot barista” you couldn’t fucking shut up about when I was half knocked out from caffeine and exhaustion?”

 

Burying her face in Anya’s shoulder, Raven snarled, “And you had to go and be embarrassing about it.”

 

Clarke continued, incredulous, “You’re still together? Hell, you actually grew the required pair and got together in the first place? I feel like I don’t even know you, Raven Reyes!”

 

“Ah, Princess, ever the drama queen,” Raven stated plainly, “Not just a barista, apparently, she’s the owner. And no, I didn’t grow a pair; Anya offered me a fucking job. Well, not fucking, not then. But with fucking in mind, definitely. She wanted in these pants, and you better believe it, Griffin.”

 

“Sweet, Raven,” Anya observed, “But maybe we should stop scarring my poor sister.”

 

As Anya guided Raven away, her hand on the small of Raven’s back, Clarke grinned as she witnessed her friend’s genuine happiness. 

 

Honestly, she was so relieved that Raven had found someone after that train wreck of a summer between sophomore and junior year.

 

Clarke was cheer vice captain, art club president and biology whiz extraordinaire, while Raven was the track star on scholarship to a school she otherwise couldn’t even wish to be able to afford. 

 

The only reason they had even become friends in the first place was that they both had a thirst for making Finn Collins life hell to pay after he had screwed them over. 

 

Literally. 

 

Her foot shifted under her weight, nearly sliding over the pencil that had been dropped and forgotten when a wiry arm caught her steadily. 

 

It settled her back on her feet before picking up the charcoal pencil between long fingers. 

 

Reaching out, Clarke picked the pencil off the hand that offered it to her, eyes marvelling over the tattoos on the upper arm that it led up to. 

 

She wasn’t staring at the muscles that were so clearly defined. Not at fucking all. 

 

“Thank you,” Clarke choked out, clearing her throat awkwardly. 

 

A short silence preceded the reply, “You are the artist who has been sitting in the window seat at Ark Café—“

 

“— I mean, you’re welcome. It’s my pleasure. Where are my manners? I apologise deeply.”  


 

Lexa stuttered as her hands began to wander with her words. 

 

* * *

 

Behind the counter Anya nudged Raven with her heel, angling her head towards her sister and that blonde girl, a smirk clearly fixed on her face. 

 

“Never seen Lexa stutter like that in the past three years, Ant,” Raven remarked in passing, brushing past Anya to refill the stacks of to-go paper cups, “Is she going to have an aneurysm or something?”

 

Raven saw Anya roll her eyes, but the fondness behind them was unmistakeable, at least to her. 

 

Nudging Anya back, or rather, digging her elbow lightly between Anya’s waist and ribcage as she retraced her steps to move to the espresso machine, Raven prompted the taller girl to reveal what was on her mind. 

 

“I’ve only seen Leks like this once before,” Anya reminisced, “When she began to fall for her first and only girlfriend. That I knew of. Granted, I wasn’t around to see much after that, but Costia is and always will be a very particular part of Lexa’s history, so I don’t think there really was anyone else that mattered, in any case.”

 

“You did what you had to do, Ant,” Raven stated, leaving no room for discussion, “You were a kid too. They kicked you out and there was no way you could have taken her with you. You wanted to give her her best shot, so you went and you worked your ass off and then you took her away. You got her out, and that’s the most important part.”

 

“Not soon enough, though. Not soon enough that they burned only a couple months later when Lexa hadn’t hardened herself yet to the thought of leaving our parents behind for good. She still felt the sting, and I knew it damn well,” Anya turned away from the rest of the café, busying her hands with rearranging the various sacks of coffee beans that they kept on display. 

 

Raven came up behind her, silently thanking whatever almighty coffee higher power for granting them a lull in an otherwise busy day, wrapping her arms around Anya’s torso and holding firmly. 

 

“No matter what it was, you did the best you could with the circumstances and what you had,” Raven murmured against the back of Anya’s shirt, “You did good, Ant, don’t fucking sell yourself short.”

 

“Wouldn’t bloody dream of it, Raven, isn't that Starbucks' secret size or something like that?” Anya chortled, somewhat weakly, “Get the hell back to work. We have customers.”

 

* * *

 

_ That is simply marvellous now she can go ahead and think that I am some sort of deranged fixating stalker or something of the like. _

 

“I mean, I have seen you across the street drawing while you sit in the window seat of Ark Café.”

 

_ And I do not even have some sort of plausible reason such as being a writer and people-watching for the sake of inspiration. _

 

“And I guess you caught my attention once or twice while I was here.”

 

_ No one people-watches and writes music at the same time that is simply implausible. _

 

“My sister owns Grounders so I spend a lot of time here. Well, recently anyway. And I saw you sitting there while I was searching for inspiration.”

 

_ Even if it is slightly true. _

 

“I swear I am not some fixated psychopath or anything of that sort.”

 

_ If you take it that I only ever watch the one person. _

 

“I write music, symphonies at the moment. I have found that it helps to write when you have a particular audience or focus in mind.”

 

_ Get it together, Alexandria, she can see you grasping at straws. _

 

Before Lexa could stammer through another sentence, Clarke interjected, “I’ve seen you as well. Drawn you as well, as strange as that may sound.”

 

Clarke reached into her backpack and pulled out the sketch. 

 

Handing it to Lexa as they stood awkwardly around a table neither was quite ready to claim from the other, Clarke stumbled over her next words, “And I found a page of music, yours, I think. I had the reckless thought to give you this sketch yesterday, though it is far from finished and less than perfect, and caught you as you were leaving with your sister. It fell as you were keeping it away from Anya, but you were gone before I could pick it up and return it.”

 

Ghosting her fingers over the outlines and charcoal marks of what supposedly made up her face, Lexa let out a shuddering breath before she dared glance again at Clarke. 

 

Gesturing for Clarke to take a seat, Lexa did the same as she lay the drawing between them, atop the sheet music she had finally found. 

 

“Thank you, for returning the music to me. It means so very much to me that it has returned to the rest of the work that it belongs to,” Lexa’s voice quivered as she spoke, gradually steadying, “And the sketch is absolutely breathtaking. Your prowess with charcoal is truly flattering, and no doubt it is a vast improvement from the subject itself.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

Clarke chuckled stiltedly before recovering, amending her previous outburst, “I mean, you can’t be serious, right? How can you not see how gorgeous you are? If anything, I didn’t quite manage to capture the beauty that captured my attention in the first place.”

 

Immediately, Clarke averted her eyes from Lexa’s gaze. 

 

Her eyes, they were some hue between grey and green that Clarke couldn’t quite put her finger on. At least she had managed to solve that mystery before she royally fucked everything up. 

 

Clarke smoothed her hands over her sweater, pressing out the phantom crinkles in the knit fabric. 

 

Catching Lexa’s eye, she started to explain, “It’s just, uh, Ark is always freaking freezing. Like space civilisation running out of fuel, sort of freezing.”

 

Lexa’s lips curved into a soft smile as she replied, “Well, no worries about that here. Anya likes to run the place warmer than it usually would be. Some like it hot, I suppose.”

 

“She is with Raven after all—” Clarke raised her eyebrows and implied, before Lexa hastily cut her off. 

 

“Can we not talk about my sister and Raven Reyes like that, I beg of you.”

 

As much as it was phrased as something of a question, Clarke knew a desperate demand when she heard one, and she relented, raising both hands in surrender. 

 

“Well then, all I’ll say is that they been oh so subtly eavesdropping and spying on us this entire time,” Clarke mentioned offhandedly. 

 

Lexa gritted her teeth, eyes flashing a steely shade as she made to stand from her seat, “Antalya, I swear—”

 

Reaching her hand out and laying it over Lexa’s tense hand as it gripped the edge of the table, Clarke rubbed soothing circles until Lexa had visibly relaxed. 

 

The moment Lexa’s gaze had turned back to its enigmatic hue and to its focus on Clarke, though, she pulled her hand back as swiftly she could and worried her lip with her teeth while boring holes into her palms, now in her lap. 

 

* * *

 

“Every single time I’m about to say Griffin’s got game, she fucking screws up and I just want to throw the milk jug at them or something,” Raven snarled. 

 

Anya passed Raven as she went to finish up the last drink order that had come in, leaving Raven to tend to the register and mussing her hair playfully. 

 

“I’d expect Lexa to do better than this as well; heck, I taught her how to flirt properly after seeing her horrifying attempts. She’s lucky she’s so bloody cute,” Anya shook her head as she watched her sister flounder where she was supposed to flourish. 

 

Winking at Anya just as the bell on the door rang, announcing a new customer, Raven quipped, “Must run in the genes then.”

 

 "What can I say," Anya shrugged, "I'm the quote-unquote phenomenal package deal."

 

"Fuck you," Raven threw over her shoulder. 

 

"Please."


	4. fauves (lontano)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a conflict is re-sparked, a sister exhibits her protectiveness in more ways than one, and maybe something real might actually come of this whole cacophony.

 

“Good afternoon, what can I get you today?” Raven chirped, rolling her eyes internally. 

 

The man who had stepped into Grounders had dark hair slicked back and combed down, brown eyes that pierced past Raven, straight to Anya. Without acknowledging Raven’s words, nor her presence for that matter, he cleared his throat and tapped the toe of a singular leather shoe. 

 

Anya stepped towards Raven, facing the girl while her back was towards the man at the counter. 

 

Placing one hand softly to frame Raven’s jaw, Anya murmured, ducking her head, “I’ll handle it out back if you’re okay to handle the café on your own for a moment?”

 

“An explanation later, that’s all I ask, Anya,” Raven’s words were clipped, but gentle. Even her usual bite was more reserved as she spoke, regarding the man behind Anya with veiled disdain. 

 

Thanking Raven quietly, Anya’s demeanour did a complete 180 as she whipped around to face the man who continued standing there, as if the world should have stopped at his feet. 

 

Jerking her head towards the back door, Anya stalked off before the man could properly catch up to her. 

 

* * *

 

Lexa drew a pencil over a spare piece of manuscript paper, guiding Clarke note by note through what the musical notation meant. 

 

Beginning with the skeleton of the first movement’s main theme, she set the pencil down between them as she explained the harmony and countermelodies that she had written to blend with it. 

 

As Clarke picked up a pencil — the nub that Lexa had placed between them rather than one of her own, a fact that made Lexa’s fingers lose any semblance of sensation — Lexa pondered aloud, “The only issue that remains is how to modulate or modify the theme to put it into the third movement. Everything else is effectively complete—”

 

Glancing down at the manuscript paper, Lexa barely reined in the grin that blossomed as she witnessed child-like wonder and Clarke’s artistic prowess entwine. 

 

Clarke had filled in gaps between notes with lines and curves like calligraphy, linking and segregating the music in a purely visual way at first glance. 

 

“That actually makes musical sense,” Lexa breathed, her hand hovering over the paper between them, “If I move the notes around in sections then that modulates the movement to start a minor third up from the first, and the foundation of it still sounds similar, just a little more—”

 

“Up in the air?” Clarke offered, pressing the pencil back into Lexa’s hand. 

 

“More or less,” Lexa murmured in reply, using the line below the drawing to put the new melody together. 

 

Watching Lexa work in relative silence for a while, Clarke bit her lip until she saw Lexa set the pencil stub back onto the table before speaking, “What instruments do you play?”

 

“That—” Lexa chuckled, “The answer to that question truly depends on your definition of ‘play’.”

 

“Like, I dunno,” Clarke paused, considering her next words, “You can play songs and pieces on it I guess. Not virtuoso level, mind. Though I don’t doubt there are a few instruments you’d be amazing on.”

 

Lexa cocked her head to the left, drumming her fingers on the table lightly. 

 

“Fine, what was your first instrument, then?” Clarke caved.

 

Grinning minutely, Lexa divulged just loudly enough for Clarke to hear, “Percussion. I was in the school band the moment it started being offered. Although I do suppose I began tinkering with the piano earlier than that, since Anya played since she was a child and I used to bother her until she would teach me the basics.”

 

“Favourite instrument?” Probing further, Clarke smiled, seeing Lexa’s brow furrowed as she regarded the question. 

 

Lexa’s hands began to gesticulate as she ambled through her words, “Among those I have never learnt to play for some reason or another, the trumpet would have to be one of those which I admire most. Among those which I do play, though, it is quite difficult to choose. Perhaps cello, or saxophone. They both sound so  human , so close to the sounds I think in.”

 

Her eyes trained on the striations in the wood of the table between them, Lexa barely noticed the arrival of a new person until their voice broke through her reverie.

 

“She plays trumpet,” The voice chirped brightly, twin lithe hands landing on the blonde’s shoulders as a dark-haired girl appeared directly  in Lexa’s line of sight. 

 

Clarke rolled her eyes, swatting Octavia’s hands away lightly.

 

“And Lexa’s a sucker for creative types. Also blondes,” A deeper voice, gruff but mirthful, came from behind Lexa. 

 

“It would do you well to retract those offending words, or at least reconsider them, Lincoln,” Lexa drawled, “Unless you would prefer the alternative of having Anya set loose on you.”

 

“She wouldn’t, Commander,” Lincoln chuckled as he abandoned his place behind Lexa in favour of striding over to Octavia and looping his arm around her waist, “You think you’re real scary but your sister agrees with me on this one.”

 

Octavia tapped Clarke over the top of her head affectionately, offering an olive branch, “We’ll leave you alone; we have better things to do after all, but only if you exchange numbers. Okay, bye!”

 

“Sorry about that, Octavia can be a little intense,” Clarke remarked, cheeks reddening. 

 

Lexa let out a bark of a laugh, sporadic and short lived as it was, “She and Lincoln deserve each other, in that case.”

 

“So,” Lexa tripped over her words as they stumbled past her lips, “I would not be adverse to the idea of exchanging contact details. Unless you are, of course.”

 

* * *

 

Anya nearly ripped the back door of the café off of its hinges. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that Raven would probably murder her if she did. 

 

“What do you want?” She spat poisonously, any semblance of restraint having been thrown to the wind, “And don’t you fucking say that you want to ‘get to know’ her. She’s been living the past twenty-some of her life without you and she’s done perfectly well for herself. I won’t have you coming in here and fucking it all up for her.”

 

The man leaned against the brick exterior of Grounders’ back entrance. Pulling a chequebook out of his blazer lapel, he stepped towards Anya, who simply sidestepped right into his personal space and raised an arm to brace herself. 

 

“No, you will not be bribing me to let you take my sister,” Anya snarled, close enough to his face to convey the intended threat but not close enough that she was overly repulsed by his very presence.

 

He raised a hand to push Anya away from him, stating plainly, “She’s only your half-sister. What do you care anyway? Your mother chose to stay with your father. That has nothing to do with me, or with Alexandria.”

 

“Don’t fucking call her that,” Anya exclaimed, “You have no right, and you don’t know  shit about her.”

 

The man shoved Anya roughly against the opposing brick wall, his words like shattered glass embedding themselves in her skin, “I can take all this away from you without even lifting a finger. I would reconsider, if I were you.”

 

“Take your old money, your greasy hands and your sickening threats and get out of here,” Anya spoke levelly, dusting herself off where she had smacked into the wall, “The choice lies with her, and if she says no, you are going to respect that. Coming after us like this really doesn’t help your case.”

 

With that, Anya turned sharply on her heel and stalked back into the café, forcing herself to school her expression and shove the dislocated shoulder back into its socket before joining Raven in serving customers once more. 

 

* * *

 

Anya had bit her lip each time a snippy response had threatened to escape as Raven worked around her, but eventually Raven had still caught on to Anya’s foul mood.

 

Taking the four steps — two and a half, in Anya’s case — to cross from the register to the espresso machines, Raven wrapped her arms firmly around Anya’s waist from behind. 

 

“What happened?” Raven probed, her arms loosening their hold on Anya once she felt the taller girl drop her tensed shoulders and allowing her fingers to surreptitiously sneak beneath Anya’s blouse and tickle at her sides. 

 

Anya squirmed away violently, whirling around and taking Raven into her arms. 

 

“The man thinks he has a right to come here, threaten my sister and threaten to take all of this away from us. He thinks he can just swoop into her life after he has been absent for her entire fucking life, well he can go fuck himself, because there is no way I’m letting that happen,” Anya whispered harshly, “He wants to take her back now, after he has denied for so long having a daughter because my parents had been married when they conceived Lexa.”

 

“He doesn’t deserve her, Ant,” Raven murmured soothingly, “You raised her, after all. In every way that matters you were the one who raised her and made her who he is today. He doesn’t have shit on you.”

 

Anya sighed, brushing a stray lock of Raven’s hair out of her face, “He has money, and power. I own a fucking café.”

 

“You have love, Ant. You have family.”

 

“Thank you, Raven,” Anya rasped, kissing Raven on the forehead.

 

“Your shoulder?” Raven pushed, reaching for the neckline of Anya’s blouse to take a better look at the offending joint that had had Anya wincing, if only barely. 

 

Anya shrugged it off, chuckling wryly, “Shoved me into the brick wall out back. Yet another reason why I’m never letting him near my baby sister if she doesn’t want to see him.”

 

“Let Clarke look at it. And the scrapes,” Raven proposes, gesturing towards the table where Clarke and Lexa still sat, “She was damn close to being a doctor before she switched to art full time. And talk to Lexa about this, maybe.”

 

“You’re not supposed to be the voice of reason, Rey,” Anya remarked drolly, “Too fun for that.”

 

“Eh, it’s gotta be one of us, right?” Raven retorted, “And now I hardly think it’s going to be you. Now go talk to your sister.”

 

* * *

 

Anya had worked all the way to closing, in spite of Clarke’s instructions — no, suggestions — to take it easy on her shoulder for the time being. 

 

When Clarke had packed up her belongings, Anya had taken her aside, staring her down once she had given her a cursory once-over.

 

“How serious are you about this?” Anya spoke lowly, her voice edging closer to the border between cautionary and predatory, “So help me, if you break my sister’s heart.”

 

Clarke swallowed audibly, running her charcoal smudged hand — she had gotten back to drawing once Lexa had gotten fully into finishing her symphony off, this time with a much better view of her new muse — through her blonde hair.

 

Today had been… new. A welcome sort of new, filled with emotions she had hardly found herself daring to feel since the drama with Finn Collins and Raven had gone down. 

 

Clarke could see it going somewhere, if she was being perfectly honest. She wanted it to go somewhere. 

 

“Quite.”

 

Anya nodded brusquely, regarding Clarke sternly before continuing in another line of questioning, “How much do you know about her past?”

 

“Not much, to be absolutely honest,” Clarke began tentatively, “But I would rather allow her to share it with me in her own time, rather than you telling me about it in a bid to see if I scare easily. I won’t run, just because she has a past. We all have pasts.”

 

Without a word, Anya sidestepped Clarke, beckoning for Lexa to leave the café with her and locking the front entrance once Clarke had scampered out and on her way as well. 

 

“Come on Little Leks,” Anya smirked, “Let’s head home. I hear cheap beer and pizza calling our name.

 

“Seriously, Anya, you need to eat better,” Lexa chastised good-naturedly, “One would think you were still a child, what with the sorts of food you elect to consume.”

 

“Live a little, Heda,” Anya teased as they strolled home, arm in arm.

 

* * *

 

 What did you save my number as? - Skaiprisa

 

Regarding that… - Lexa (?)

 

Well… - Lexa (?)

 

Just want some ideas on how to save yours pls tell me it isn’t just Clarke Griffin or some boring shipoopy like that. - Skaiprisa

 

Your first name is Clarke? - Lexa (?)

 

I am going to decline on commenting on your use of ‘shipoopy’, by the way. - Lexa (?)

 

Yeah? - Skaiprisa

 

Sorry, I was under the impression it was either Griffin (since that was what Raven called you), or that Griffin was your last name (since you called Raven ‘Reyes’)and the first was undisclosed. - Lexa (?)

 

OIC haha - Skaiprisa

 

But rly, what did you save me as? - Skaiprisa

 

My dumb-ass kid sister left her phone unlocked so I’m just going to tell you - Lexa (?)

 

She saved your no. as ‘Skaiprisa’ you can ask her urself what it means here she is now - Lexa (?)

 

I am so extremely sorry that was Anya - Lexa (?)

 

So I guess I should probably explain - Lexa (?)

 

It would be nice but you don’t have to if you don’t want to - Skaiprisa

 

It is perfectly alright - Lexa (?)

 

I find myself inclined to explain, to be perfectly honest - Lexa (?)

 

It means ‘Sky Princess’ in the language Anya and I used to speak to each other in as a child, to ascertain that our conversations were ours, and ours alone - Lexa (?)

 

Like a secret ode? - Skaiprisa

 

*Cock - Skaiprisa

 

Fuck, I typed *code - Skaiprisa

 

Your eyes are so very blue — I am sure you would be better at describing the shade, but to me, it is the bluest blue I have ever seen - Lexa (?)

 

If there was a certain defining characteristic of ‘blueness’, the colour of your eyes would epitomise it - Lexa (?)

 

And that colour reminded me of the sky. The princess part, well, that part is pretty self-explanatory. - Lexa (?)

 

Ur grammar and vocabulary is impeccable but good lord woman ur punctuation is erratic - Skaiprisa

 

You can’t just use full stops when they agree with u and run on over several messages when u ain’t even bovvered — Skaiprisa

 

Thank you, Catherine Tate - Lexa (?)

 

Holy shit you caught the reference - Skaiprisa

 

Fuck it you’re going to be River Song on my phone - Skaiprisa

 

Wait no you’re so much more Vastra than River - Skaiprisa

 

Vastra it is :) - Skaiprisa

 

As you wish, my lady - Vastra

 

Get some sleep, Clarke. I do hope I will be graced with your presence again tomorrow. - Vastra


	5. blank slate (a tempo)

Clarke? - Vastra

May I ask you something? - Vastra

 

Yeah what’s up? - Skaiprisa

 

Forget it, it was nothing important. I apologise for disrupting your day, Clarke. - Vastra

Hey - Skaiprisa

You know you can tell me anything, right? - Skaiprisa

And ur never disrupting. -Skaiprisa

 

* * *

 

Clarke sat up in her bed, jostling the covers till they scrunched into a lump at her feet. 

 

It was barely bright out, the pale sunlight streaming through thin rips in her curtains where threads had run. 

 

Rare it was that Clarke got up so early, but the vibrations from her mobile phone  – or lack thereof, rather - kept her head from silencing itself and allowing her peace. 

 

Picking up her phone, Clarke thumbed the home button several times before frustratedly giving in to its ineptitude. Punching in her passcode in a flurry of clumsy smashes upon the screen, she found herself face to face with proof enough that Lexa was holding out on her. 

 

Honestly, she’d think that Lexa, with all her merits, would know what happened when one read a message sent through WhatsApp. 

 

Or perhaps she did, and had left those blue ticks pointedly, so that Clarke would not push any further. 

 

Scrubbing a hand over her sleep-worn face, Clarke swiped back to her contact list, thumb hovering over Anya’s name. 

 

Clarke stabbed at her screen rashly, allowing her fingers to piece out a message before she could stop herself from texting Anya. 

 

* * *

 

 

Hi Anya, this is Clarke. Sorry for msging u so early but I’m worried abt Lexa. Is she ok? - Unknown

 

Putting her phone away to charge, ringer on this time, Clarke extricated herself from the bed and began to gather herself for the day ahead. 

 

As she pulled a maroon sweater over her head, Clarke heard the telltale chime of an incoming message, stumbling over to the charger with her arms still tangled in her clothing. 

 

Finding her left arm stuck in limbo between the sleeve of her sweater and the torso, Clarke wrenched it through roughly before nearly ripping the charger clean apart as she sought the message that had just been received. 

 

Clarke. I’ll let u knw once I've talked to her prprly. Not so gud now, dun ask.- Anya

Fine, thank u. - Klark

 

* * *

 

“Why now, of all times?” The words fell from Lexa’s lips disjointedly, half sentences formed of tears halfway to being shed. 

 

She bit her lip before she continued, digging her nails into her palm like she had done when she was a child being chided, “He never wished to have anything at all to do with me for all of my life. What in the world changed?”

 

“I’m sorry, Leks,” Anya murmured, rubbing a hand down her little sister’s back as Lexa leaned against her.

 

A sigh burst forth from Lexa’s pursed lips, her hands pausing momentarily in their wringing to run through tangled curls haphazardly. 

 

Shifting where she sat, she removed herself from Anya’s support and turned to face her older sister. She gripped Anya’s forearm semi-firmly, loosely enough that it was no where near hurting, but tightly enough for Anya to lift her eyes to Lexa’s own. 

 

Those were the first indication that they had different parentages, really. 

 

Both of Anya’s parents had had brown eyes, like Anya’s. Father’s had been the same shade of chocolate, turning to caramel and gold in the right lighting. 

 

Even their mother had had the almond shape that Anya had inherited, always given them both a sense of sharpness, and of their eyes boring right through you. 

 

Lexa, on the other hand. Her eyes had only turned more to green as she grew older. At some point, they could no longer keep it from the sisters that they did not share a father. 

 

Half sisters, her mother had called them. 

 

No, Anya had asserted, face red and almond eyes blazing ever brighter than her mother’s matching ones, they were sisters through and through, no matter what bloodlines and genetics had to say. 

 

DNA did not make a family, Lexa had wanted to say. She eventually had, telling that straight to their faces when she had come out to them. Love made a family, and no matter what, Anya would love her. 

 

“I’m sorry, An,” Lexa rasped, “Sorry that every single time something crops up with me, you are the one who gets caught in the middle and winds up injured.”

 

Anya chuckled, her shoulders shaking minutely in mirth, “Shof op, Leksa. If it’s anyone's fault it’s that branwada’s, not yours.”

 

Anya folded her long legs back under her, shifting her weight and getting to her feet. Setting herself down on her piano bench, she flung the dust cover at Lexa.

 

“Come on, goufa,” Anya smirked, “My shoulder isn’t all that fucked up that I can’t play.”

 

Scrambling to her feet, Lexa dropped the dust cover over Anya’s eyes before she made to wander along the periphery of the room, allowing the very tips of her fingers to run over the instruments lining the walls. 

 

“What shall we attempt this time, An?” Lexa spoke brightly, a grin firmly in place despite the quiver in her voice.

 

Anya ran her fingers absentmindedly over the ivory keys as she replied, keeping her voice light, “Pick up your sax, Leks.”

 

“No-” Lexa choked, her hands stalling right upon the shut and locked case in question, “I have not played it since-”

 

“Since Costia,” Anya stated, matter-of-fact, “That piece, that instrument, it may have started out about her, but do you really want to live the rest of your life not playing your favourite instrument if only for the fact that you never got past those memories?”

 

“Not yet, Anya,” Lexa spoke in a level undertone, “Soon. When I finish writing the new piece - not the symphony, but I have another in the works - then I can start anew.”

 

Anya shrugged resignedly, sighing as she played the introductory bars to the first piece the two of them had dared write together. 

 

As much as they had gotten along in all other aspects of life, it had taken them a good few years until they had managed to work with one another musically. 

 

When they did, though, it was remarkable.

 

Setting up the amp for her fretless bass, Lexa remarked offhandedly, “Apt time to be bringing this back, is it not? We wrote this around the first time he tried to bring trouble into our lives.”

 

Her hands meandered up and down the strings of her bass as Anya’s own coaxed thick chords and fluid countermelodies out of the baby grand. 

 

“He has younger children,” Anya mumbled as she continued to play past the slightest of jolts in Lexa’s otherwise impeccable playing, “A son and a daughter. Asher is six and Yvette is eight.”

 

“And?” Probed Lexa, her knuckles whitening even as the notes never belied the tenseness.

 

“He would like for them to know their older sister, he says,” Anya continued, her voice cracking over the admission to their relationship, “Says that you are rightfully their sister-”

 

The rest of her sentence did not have to be said for Lexa to hear it anyhow.

 

“More than yours?” Lexa scoffed, “He is far more than deeply mistaken, should that be the case. They might be my genetic half-siblings, just as you may be, but you are the one who has been by me my entire life, always fulfilling the role of an older sister. He has never once even attempted to fill the shoes of a father to me.”

 

“You would be their older sister, Little Leks,” Anya sighed, her hands stilling. 

 

Striding over as quickly as the chord tethering her to the amp would allow, Lexa rested her hands over Anya’s shoulder softly, “You are the home that built me into who I am now, Antalya. He cannot take me away from you.”

 

“But he can!” Anya exclaimed, her hands smashing down upon the ivory keys in a smattering of sound that decayed into trembling dissonance, “He can take you and everything I have ever worked for in my life away from me. He has money, and power, and influence. What do I have? A coffeeshop on a small street and a relationship that I barely have the courage to take to the next step.”

 

Wrenching the hair elastic that held her hair back from her face, Anya allowed her long hair to cascade down to obscure her face just as tears began to obscure her vision.

 

“He can take everything away from me.”

 

Lexa dropped her bass to the ground wordlessly, flicking the switch of the amp off before wrapping her arms firmly around her sister’s midsection as she knelt next to the piano bench. 

 

“Fuck him, Anya,” She ground out vehemently, “I am an adult in the eyes of the law, and a well established composer and musician. I can testify in court more legitimately than I could have all those years ago, and he cannot take me away from you because I am no longer legally a minor. You can’t lose me, An.”

 

“Custody isn’t the matter here, Alexandria,” Anya uttered brokenly, “That went out of the window the day you turned twenty one. What he can do, however, is keep me well away from you.”

 

Lexa brushed Anya’s hair out of her face, using the pad of her thumb to smudge away the tears that streaked her sister’s flawless skin. The porcelain mask had finally cracked and given way. 

 

“I will speak with him,” Lexa surmised, “Come to a compromise. I will get to know my younger siblings, but under no circumstances will I cease my relationship with the sister who has raised me all my life.”

 

“They might need a big sister, Leks,” Anya relented, “And they haven’t done any wrong. Be careful, alright. He’s never been good news.”

 

* * *

 

I apologise for ignoring your messages, Clarke - Vastra

My biological father turned up at Grounders today. He threatened Anya. There is too much at stake for me not to at least hear him out. - Vastra

 

What does he want? - Skaiprisa

 

To get to know me, he claims. I can hardly bring myself to trust the man who has never wanted to acknowledge my existence. - Vastra

I will get to know my younger siblings, nothing more. - Vastra

They are meant to stop by Grounders later on today. Would you mind sharing our table for a brief while, Clarke? - Vastra

 

Of course not, babe. - Skaiprisa

Good job on the punctuation, btw. - Skaiprisa

 

* * *

 

 

Two children bound into the coffee store, dark green eyes aglow as they searched the store. When Raven caught sight of them, she ushered them towards the table in the window, where Clarke was curled in a chair sketching. 

 

“Why’s there black all over your face?” The boy blurted, before his sister nudged him firmly in the ribs. 

 

“Are you our sister?” She asked instead, but not before giving her a cursory once-over.

 

A deep chuckle came from behind the two children, as Lexa returned to her seat and gathered up the loose sheets of manuscript paper that littered the half of the table she had claimed as hers.

 

“Clarke is an artist, and a messy one at that. She is not your sister - I am - but she is someone very important to me,” Lexa tried to keep her tone light as she spoke to the two in front of her, “You must be Yvette and Asher. I am Lexa.”

 

* * *

 

Long after they had left, not before Yvette declared that she could read music and proceeding to attempt to decipher the last portions of Lexa’s symphony, Lexa gathered her papers and wrapped them back up in ribbon. 

 

Clarke had fallen asleep, sketchbook on her lap, pencil in her hand and her head on Lexa’s shoulder. She stirred as Lexa began to pick up the mess that had been left by Clarke allowing Asher to draw with her. 

 

Striding over to them, Anya motioned that they would be locking up soon, before leaving them be with a serene expression on her face. 

 

”In a way, I am glad,” Lexa admitted, “He has finally learnt how to be a father, if only not to me. His children will have a father who is present and participative, and I could not be happier for them.”

 

Clarke grinned blearily, her voice husky with sleep, “God, Lex, how did I get this lucky? No one should have that big a heart in them.”

 


	6. flourish (fine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue of sorts.

Anya crawled out of bed while the sky was still shrouded in darkness, the pale moonlight glancing in through her curtains. Laying down a bolster flush against Raven’s back as she had been, 

 

Anya scrawled a note in her jagged handwriting before pulling a tank top over her head. The shorts she had slept in would do for now. 

 

Pulling on her running shoes, Anya pulled up Zombies Run on her phone and started a new workout before heading out of the apartment door, turning the key silently in the lock behind her. 

 

Her frazzled mind found solace in the consistent, steady rhythm of rubber soles on grey concrete and dusty mud paths. 

 

She’d run this path countless times before, ever since Raven had walked her through it on the morning after their sixth month anniversary; she knew every step, every turn and every pothole like the back of her hand. 

 

For all it was worth, Anya would never stop running the path, so long as she remembered how much it meant to Raven. After all, she’d learnt that morning that it had been Raven’s training route all through high school, up until her accident.

 

With each of her eight miles, her mind drifted closer and closer back to the back of her bottom drawer. 

 

Anya was anything if not stubborn, but with that bullheadedness had never come courage, nor recklessness. She had always been measured. Spontaneousand rebellious in ways that Lexa never got to learn to be, yes, but never really brave. 

 

Pushing herself through her final herd of zombies as she scaled the steep hill that led back to Raven’s apartment, Anya cursed the stupid application as it forced her to face her apprehensions sooner rather than later. 

 

Thunder ripped the sky a new one just as she hit the plateau at the apex of the hill, heavy droplets of thick rain pummelling down. 

 

Anya took a brief moment to kick the pavement with the scuffed toe of her track shoes before forcing herself forward as quickly she could. 

 

By the time the soles of her shoes had squeaked sharply to a halt under the shelter of the apartment block, Raven was already standing there with a towel in hand, waiting. 

 

“You’re a godsend,” Anya murmured as she took the towel from Raven with a kiss to her cheek. 

 

“Says the goddess herself,” Raven smirked, volleying a loose fist at Anya’s bare shoulder, “Water doesn’t even touch your cheeks because your cheekbones are so high. Anyway, my fabulousness shouldn’t be news to you.”

 

Anya slung the towel around her neck before lunging straight at Raven, wrapping her arms around the shorter girl’s shoulders. 

 

Immediately Raven squirmed and tried in vain to escape Anya’s sopping grip, squealing sharply, “Get off, Ant! You’re freakin’ drenched!”

 

“You never complained about me getting you wet before,” Anya drawled, grinning as she picked Raven up easily and spun her around. 

 

Raven rolled her eyes, finally allowing herself to lift her eyes to the sky and chortle without inhibition as she watch the earth spin madly on around her, “It looks like I’m at the centre of the earth and the earth can’t stop spinning.”

 

“You are the centre of the world, Rey,” Anya stated plainly, chewing on her lip before continuing, “The centre of mine, at least.”

 

Setting Raven on the ground gently, only letting go when both her feet had steadily braced themselves against the pavement, Anya turned away from her. 

 

“I was going to–” 

 

“I had this plan–”

 

“You are the most important person that I have in my life, besides Leks,” Anya started once more, pacing back and forth between the edge of dry shelter and the place where Raven stood, “I had something real planned, something fitting of how much you mean to me, but obviously that has all gone to shit.”

 

Anya took two final steps towards Raven from where she had finally stalled in her pacing, clasping Raven’s hands in hers as she knelt down. 

 

“Marry me, Rey,” Anya rasped, “You are everything I have ever wanted and needed and I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ve just been too much of a fucking coward to ever ask. I have a ring, I swear. It’s ups–”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I swear this was better planned but it just seemed perf–” Anya paused in her tirade for a moment, taking in the interjection, “Yes?”

 

“Yes, you idiot,” Raven grinned, pulling Anya to her feet, “Of course I’ll marry you. It only took you nearly four fucking years to get your shit together enough to ask me.”

 

“Shut up, ass,” Anya pulled Raven close to her once more, placing a kiss softly on her forehead, “Let’s go back up before the damp makes your brace stick and I have to carry you up the stairs.”

 

“We have to get to your place in half an hour, Ant,” Raven groaned melodramatically, “Can’t we just head over now? The ring can wait since you’ve gotten the answer already.”

 

“Fine. You brought my wallet down, I assume?”

 

* * *

 

Clarke slipped out of the house for the first time, her bare feet barely making any sound that dared echo in the cavernous foyer. It was barely light out, the sun just beginning to bleed onto the very bottom of the horizon 

 

She had scrawled a note for her mother, an honest but apprehensive one. 

 

After all, Clarke could not have been expected to keep her revamped and improved life from Abby, even if Abby was so often at work. 

 

She had sat her mother down over a bowl of homemade chili and explained that she had begun to properly sell her work, about two months into her relationship with Lexa. At that point Abby had been bereft, unable to comprehend that her daughter had completely abandoned being a surgeon. 

 

The straw that truly broke the proverbial camel’s back was when Clarke revealed that she was in a relationship with Lexa. 

 

All that Abby had heard was “her”, instead of “him”, and she had once more chosen to completely shut Clarke out by burying herself in surgery after surgery after ER stint. 

 

Clarke couldn’t quite pinpoint when it had begun to get better again. 

 

Abby stopped actively avoiding her quite so violently, at the very least. There were words exchanged, all civil. 

 

And yet, Clarke still found herself wary of how her mother truly felt. She couldn’t risk letting herself believe that Abby had come around, only to have to find out later that Abby had never completely accepted it. 

 

This way, they might never be close, or even closer to what they had been while Clarke was in medical school, but at the very least Clarke didn’t set herself up for heartbreak. 

 

To be absolutely honest, though, Clarke had never quite seen her mother as being homophobic. Or biphobic, for that matter. 

 

In any case, Clarke had surmised that her mother had gotten to live out her life; it was really up to Clarke to live her own out, not Abby. 

 

Sliding her key into the lock of Lexa and Anya’s front door, unlocking it soundlessly, Clarke placed her flats against the wall and set about readying their surprises for that day. 

 

She wrung her hands, pacing back and forth from the kitchen island to the front door as she ran through the rest of the day in her head. 

 

Twitching her fingers on her right hand in time with a beat in her head, Clarke swallowed the lump in her throat before decisively making her way to the studio they had essentially converted the study into and gathered the last of her pieces for the gallery showing. 

 

This piece, she had only ever worked on here, and yet Lexa had never lain eyes on it.

 

The doorbell rang just as Clarke placed her final canvas (shrouded in a veil, of course) into her large tote bag together with a few tubes of paint and a handful of brushes. Contingency planning, Lexa had taught her to do that. 

 

Leaning the bag against the kitchen island on her way to the door, Clarke wrenched the plank of wood open before gaping.

 

“Why the fuck are the both of you drenched?” Clarke exclaimed, ushering both Anya and Raven in hurriedly, “Don’t you dare drip water on her original scores – they’re on the piano bench – or my painting – next to the island.” 

 

Shoving towels in both of their smirking faces, Clarke rolled her eyes.

 

“Anya finally cracked, didn’t she?” She drawled, “Cowardly ass.”

 

“Oi!” Raven snapped, “That’s my fine piece of cowardly ass you’re talking about.”

 

“Why’d you even ring the bell anyway?” Clarke directed the question at Anya this time, “It’s your fucking apartment.”

 

“Just in case we were interrupting anything, Princess,” Anya faked a wince, “There are some things I never want to have to witness.”

 

“The entire point of this is that your sister isn’t home, idiot.”

 

“Eh,” Anya scoffed, “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

 

Clarke rolled her eyes again, striding over to her tote to pick up the thermos food container and dumping it unceremoniously in Anya’s hands. 

 

“That’s for your sister. She had an overnight rehearsal, god knows why, probably because she’s too busy obsessing over every slightest flaw in her performance or conducting or something or the other,” Clarke rambled, pulling on her flats once more, “I’m going to set up the gallery and open early so that I can actually reach in time for her surprise. Keep your mouths shut for another few hours, I beg you.”

 

“Get the fuck out of here, Griffin,” Raven smirked, poking Clarke in the side with a finger for good measure. 

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa felt bad. She really did. 

 

It was the day of Clarke’s gallery opening, her very first in the space downtown that the Greene family owned, and she was not there to be the first one to wish her girlfriend the best. 

 

The last time Lexa had been there, Costia was doing her first showing. 

 

Her only showing. 

 

And two weeks after that she’d been gone, just like that. Gang violence, or a mugging gone wrong, or a hate crime. They’d never really gotten to find out. 

 

And Lexa hadn’t been there that morning either. Caught up in finishing that piece – yes, _that piece_  – Lexa had stayed up all night, and had fallen asleep on her work and slept through her alarm to get to the Greene’s gallery first thing in the morning, before Costia herself even got there. 

 

Nevertheless she ran her fingers over and over and over the keys of her saxophone soundlessly. She had yet to play the instrument in front of anyone. 

 

Hell, she was still debating whether or not to actually go through with her plan, or to abandon it altogether. 

 

Just as she began to lift the reed and mouthpiece to her lips, chapped and parted, footsteps bumbled and blundered their noisy way onto the stage. 

 

In the darkness of the near-empty auditorium, Lexa’s hands jerked the instrument back into resting position, her head snapping up to regard Raven and Anya as they stepped onto the dimly lit stage. 

 

“We come bearing food,” Raven immediately stated, “Don’t murder us.”

 

“Your girlfriend made it, so you have to eat,” Anya chimed in, tossing the thermos in a perfect arc across the stage. 

 

Reaching up with one hand, Lexa caught the container with a solid _thunk_  as the strap around her neck steadied the saxophone. 

 

“Thank you,” She murmured, just loudly enough for the sound to carry across the stage. 

 

After Lexa had dug into her breakfast, she paused to ask, “How is Clarke?”

 

“Call her yourself, Little Leks,” Anya spoke lowly, “Take five and talk to her a while. You look like you need it. The show is going to be just fine.”

 

“I think I shall.”

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke bustled around the gallery, straightening paintings and filling in phantom gaps and patches in pieces as she passed by. 

 

Her final piece had been hung upon the wall at long last, the muslin that covered it all this while removed, folded and tied around her wrist. 

 

She was the most proud of that piece. 

 

The entire gallery spanned themes and styles. It spanned most of their relationship, as well.

 

There were the paintings of sunsets done Impressionist style from early dinner picnics with Lexa on the boardwalk, her girlfriend’s head in her lap as she wrote music, humming softly. 

 

Watercolour pieces of rainy Sunday morning coffee dates scattered themselves over one wall. Graphite pencil sketches of Lexa’s hands over cello strings skimmed another.

 

Bold, broad, bright strokes of almost pure oil paints painted the night sky and constellations in a collision with burning supernovas and a cascade of colour, set right across the ceiling. 

 

She and Lexa had painted that one together, texturing the base layers by throwing paint both at the large canvas and at each other. 

 

Somewhere beneath the top coats was a bright red sweep where too much acrylic had gotten into Lexa’s hair and Clarke had tackled her onto the painting in progress. 

 

On the innermost wall of the gallery, facing the main entrance on a slight bias, hung the centrepiece. The work that tied everything in the gallery together. 

 

Clarke had spent day after day just staring, running her gaze over her girlfriend and memorising exactly how the light bounced off her skin, how her cheekbones framed her face as if it were carved of marble, how her fingers moved when she brushed them across Clarke’s cheek. 

 

Every detail of Lexa that she could have captured, Clarke had committed to memory. 

 

Whence came the final piece. Charcoal on manuscript paper, the lines of the staves running through the painting. 

 

She had finally settled on drawing Lexa as she had first seen her, curled up in her window seat in Grounders from Clarke’s perch across the street. 

 

The only colour in the piece was in Lexa’s eyes, filled by a green that had taken Clarke three days to finally layer out with colour pencil. 

 

Lexa would see it tomorrow. 

 

As she began to put her supplies back into her bag, footsteps resounded in the whitewashed space. 

 

Clarke turned around languidly, speaking as she stuffed the last paintbrush into her tote, “I’m just about done, Dr. Greene–”

 

“I am neither Yolanda nor Lamar, Clarke Griffin.”

 

It was all Clarke could do to suppress the chill that ran down her spine. 

 

“What are you doing here?” She ground out, trying her best to keep her voice level as her nails dug into her palms. 

 

He grinned, wiping his hands on his slacks, “Is it wrong to want to see the work of the girl who is dating my daughter?”

 

“Stay away from her,” Clarke warned, “Unless she expressly wishes to see you, stay away from her.”

 

She took another step towards him, narrowing her eyes, “She has been through enough and only came out stronger. She has the biggest heart I’ve ever known. You will not take everything she and Anya have built and tear it down.”

 

He made to scoff, but Clarke cut him off, “If you see her as your daughter, then let her be happy. She is happy living the life she has now. Anya has made her happy all this while. Don’t take that away from them. Please don’t.”

 

He closed the three steps between them, arms raising towards Clarke. 

 

“Anton, step away,” Lamar Greene’s deep voice resounded firmly in the gallery, pushing the man back slightly, “Leave before we make you.”

 

Yolanda stalked forward, wrapping her hand around his wrist and pulling him away from Clarke before dropping it, “Stop doing this. She’s happy, that’s all you can really ask for. I know you’re angry you never got to know her, and that you had reasons for not taking her in earlier, but even you have to admit that your reasons were piss poor. She’ll give what she’s willing to, but don’t ask for more. Just be thankful she’s around.”

 

With that, he nodded at both the Greenes and wordlessly stalked out of the gallery. 

 

“Your work is breathtaking, Clarke,” Lamar assured, meandering around the pieces that she had put up.

 

“Thank you for the opportunity,” Clarke uttered sincerely, “I can’t thank you enough.”

 

“Rare, though, that the artist will be absent but so close by at this sort of a showing,” Yolanda laughed easily, “But we all know how important Lexa is to you. Your work more than speaks for itself.”

 

“You better go soon, Clarke,” Lamar reminded her, ushering her towards the door, “You best not be late.”

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa is running her fingers up and down the neck of her cello when Clarke sneaks in through the backstage door. 

 

Anya, at her piano bench, does not stop her scales once even as she hands Clarke a gleaming silver Bach trumpet and points her towards the principal player. 

 

Slotting in the mouthpiece she’d become accustomed to over weeks and months of secret rehearsal, Clarke twisted it slightly to the left and blew warm air through metal tubing. 

 

Once Echo, the principal trumpeter, had indicated her satisfaction with both Clarke’s tone and tuning, Clarke silently padded her way towards the woman with her neck bent gracefully as she moved as one with her cello. 

 

Lifting her trumpet to her lips, Clarke allowed a burst of air to exit the bell of her trumpet as a sonorous concert B-flat, smirking as she witnessed Lexa jump. 

 

“What in the–” Lexa began, irate, before she turned around and registeredthe one standing behind her, “What are you doing here?”

 

“Playing third trumpet, duh.” 

 

Tears began to pool in Lexa’s green eyes, sharpening and deepening their colour, “What of your showing?”

 

“The Greenes are helping with that. You’ll see the last work tomorrow.”

 

Lexa held on to her cello with her left hand, using her right arm to pull Clarke tightly into a warm embrace as she murmured into blonde hair, “Thank you, Clarke, so much.”

 

* * *

 

 

The centre spotlight shone on Lexa in a straight-backed chair, the orchestra flanking her. Anya leaned against the conductor’s stand, baton in hand and minutely beating time. 

 

“Well, I’m finally back,” Lexa began shakily, the microphone amplifying every quiver, “It has been a good long while since I have written enough new material to warrant a premiere like this. For those of you who have never been to one of these shows, do expect countless personnel changes throughout the evening.”

 

Anya let out a chuckle, slightly louder than she had originally meant it, causing Lexa to pause before continuing mirthfully, “Anya will be conducting the first piece. It is a symphony, the first I have written. A symphony of the people. I wrote it in a coffee shop – Anya’s café – among the sounds and sights of every day and everyone. Hopefully, that translates.”

 

Gesturing for the orchestra to rise, Lexa began their introductions, “Our group is small, as it always is. One per part, really, save strings. We have a couple of special guests today. The first is Anya, of course. She will be playing the piano for several of the pieces in tonight’s programme. Tris is our guest cellist and electric guitarist, who will be joining us permanently from here on out. The last is Clarke. Third trumpet, and I was unaware of her participation until just a half hour ago. Let us begin, shall we?”

 

As the lighthearted laughter in the audience died down, Anya raised her baton and the piece began, Lexa’s fourth horn line intertwining with Clarke’s third trumpet as the third movement closed itself off. 

 

The piece meandered through the remnants of heartbreak to new life, the endless, ceaseless thrumming of constancy and change pervading the symphony as violas and the lone alto clarinet formed a harmonic backbone. 

 

When the piece ended, and Anya took her leave, the orchestra streamed off stage, leaving only Lexa on stage with her cello in place of the horn and a Steinway grand. 

 

“This piece, I wrote with my sister. We have been playing music together all our lives,” Lexa began as Anya took her place at the piano bench, “Of time lost, and lives lived, here is the Neverland Promises.”

 

The sisters played their lines and wound the music around and through each other with practiced ease only borne out of years of practice. 

 

Anya missed a couple of bass notes, and Lexa double stopped at the wrong bar, but they made it through to resounding applause. Tugging her baby sister up and out of her seat, Anya crushed her in a hug as she whispered how proud she was in Lexa’s ear. 

 

The last three pieces on the programme came and went, each with its story and unique instrumentation. By the end of the last piece, Lexa had played a different instrument in each. 

 

* * *

 

“This last piece is new in several ways,” Lexa began, her bass guitar in hand as she distracted herself unplugging it from its amplifier, “Besides it being my newest composition, it also marks a new beginning. There is now a piece, and an instrument, I hardly play. I wrote Fantasie Furiosa for a very special person, and that person passed away a while ago. I haven’t played the saxophone since.”

 

Putting her bass down on its stand, Lexa tucked the strap for her saxophone under her collar before picking up the instrument and striding to front stage, slightly off centre. 

 

“This piece, it represents a new beginning. I will play Furiosa once more, or at least I won’t wince every single time its main theme materialises in my head,” Lexa continued, “And this piece is as much for her as it is for me. It is ours. Mine, and Clarke’s.”

 

Lexa bit her lip, feeling warmth blossom over her face as she stuttered before continuing, “If Clarke would come sit by me for this piece, this is New Again.”

 

 


End file.
